The Assessment of the Nurses' Performance in Applying Ethical Principle While Bandaging Wounds in Shahid Beheshti Hospital of Kashan, Iran, in 2016

Adherence to ethics is essential for clinical care. One of the nursing cares is wound care and dressing. Nurses should perform dressing by the adoption of the correct technique, along with the observation of ethical principles. However, some previous studies have shown that the performance of some nurses in this regard was not satisfactory. Therefore, due to the importance of this issue, this study aimed to determine the performance of nurses in adherence to ethical principles in dressing.

This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 200 nurses of Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Kashan, Iran, during 8 months in 2016 using convenience sampling. The data were collected using a researcher-made checklist comprising demographic information and performance of nurses in adherence to ethical principles in dressing. The data were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test and Pearson correlation. A p-value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

The mean age of the nurses was 24.87±6.52 years, and 66% of the study subjects were female. In addition, 61.5% of the participants were single and 75% of them served Manpower Planning. The obtained mean score of the questionnaire within the range of 0-30 was reported as 20.63±4.11. Furthermore, 57% of the nurses applied ethical principles well while dressing patients. Among the underlying variables, there was a significant relationship between marital status and occupational status with the total score (P<0.05).

The results showed that only half of the nurses performed well and their mean score was at a moderate level. Therefore, it is suggested that authorities plan and take necessary measures to identify the causes of shortcomings and take the policies associated with these ethical issues into account.